COMPOSING(MEDIA) = COMPOSING(EMBODIMENT) bodies, technologies, writing, the teaching of writing Edited by KRISTIN L. AROLA ANNE FRANCES WYSOCKI UTAH STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS Logan, Utah 20121 WHOSE BODY? Looking Critically at New Interface Designs Ben McCorkle ‘The personal computer has gen us fo things: bad metaphors ‘and bd poste. Tom Willard ‘Think of it as the thin chrome line, the literal contact zone between the human body and the personal computer. Industry insiders refer to it as HCI—the human-computer interface—and it represents the convergence of the two data sets identified by Tom Willard in the epigraph above, cxem- plified by anyone suffering from mouseinduced carpal tunnel syndrome ‘or confused by the concept of dragging a compact disc icon into a trashcan in order to eject it. It is along this chin line of demarcation that I propose ‘we focus our critical attentions because soon that line will become blurred and indistinguishable, or will even disappear altogether. Beyond the questions of aesthetics or ease of use, our gazes should be concerned with the ways in which designers of digital imterfaces—and by this, I mean to suggest a broad categorization including the interface design of various operating systems, software applications, and even hard- ‘ware itselfassume unquestioned subject positions for the user. We can begin this critique by revisiting the conversation arguing that the cur- rent interface paradigm anticipates an impossibly idealized universal user through the repetition of common design tropes and metaphors, as well ‘as physical functionality, In the spirit of such scholars as Christina Haas, Steven Johnson, and Christine Neuwirth, I contend that these common design features actually privilege a certain subject position at the exclusion. of others, and that the construct of the universal user serves as a mecha- nism to devalue those bodies outside that position. From this foundational critique, we can look ahead to examine sites that offer us glimpses into the likely future of interface design, among them advances in touchscreen hardware, voice/handvriting recognition soft- ware, ubiquitous computing and internet appliances, and virtual reality— all of which suggest an increased attention to embodiment in the inter- face design paradigm. Again, the critical question of whose body (or bod ies) is being assumed in the development of these new interfaces is crucial,Whose taco 495 inthesworld manipulation of content, we can alse slinpse hopeful sites of resistance, notably in a counterbalanced vee of artifacts designed to remind us explicitly that we are interacting with the Zchine. Without such a critical counterbalance, the predomigane logie of the new interface will kely be reified va a varicty of mechanives the Tanguage used to frame the user experience (in advertising and technical documents, for instance), the sanctioned uses to which new technology is, Put (touch-sensitive table displays intended for corporate settings), and the deeply embedded assumptions about how the bod. ought to behave in. the face of new technologies. Collectively, these formal smd di ry sult in a thin chrome line that only certain types of bodice ane allowed to cross, bodies that have historically known the Privileges associat- ed with the technological vanguard, Ukimately, then, this chapter serves as, For teachers and scholars of composition in particular, the sakes in this Speroaching shift are high. For one, we have an opporeunity to be ahent of he technological curve, helping to aet upon it rather than veact ta it, technological transition across our history. With obligation to insist on maintaining an ethical character to the ongoing conversation affecting how we develop these new {cchnologies, how we recognize the variety of eloquent and useful nen forms that will undoubtedly emerge, and how we teach people t com- discs CReetively using them (in the realms of both academic and civic Ciscourse). Asa field, we risk being caught Natfooted ifwe think the cans technological paradigm will simply mark a return to be entering a sage of digitally augmented communication, one tine will involve a complex combination of alphabetic, aural, video, graphical, hap- tic, gestural, and oral elements. Consequently, we need noe only to devel gb new Pedagogies for teaching how to compose using these new technolo. Ses, we must also teach students to develop a robust avarenes of de tools76 COMPOSING (MEDIA} = COMPOSING (EMBODIMENT) DEFINING EMBODIMENT (Our body isnot primarity in space; itis of Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1945) Before we can contemplate the historical changes in the digital interface, a digression is in order. We would be well served to revisit the definition Cf embodiment, a concept that has suffered from “feature creep” over the years, but one that is useful to our purposes if used in a very precise way. Specifically, looking to Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s original phenomenologi- cal schema of embodiment gives usa useful vocabulary to describe the kind of paradigm shift we are approaching in digital technology: from a meta- phorical state to a more seamless virtual state of embodiment, or rather from a state in which we are acutely aware of our bodies as we interact with digital echnologies to one in which we are likely to forget them. Ti his 1945 book Phenomenology of Perception, Maurice Merleau-Ponty ist ‘gave usa philosophical model for explaining how a subject is constituted as an in-the world being. These bodily aspects of subjectivity, which stand a priori to any second-level conceptualization, make up the ontological con- dition Merleau-Ponty termed “embodiment.” Embodiment is at base the experience of one’s body as a unified potentiality or capacity for acting in the world through time and space. In this model, Merleau-Ponty distin- guishes between the more authentic phenomenal body (the body Tinhab- it, as i exists as an active force in-theworld, reacting without conceptual ization to the phenomenological data it collects) and the static abstraction he refers to as the “objective body” (dhat physiological mass of quivering flesh to which each of us ean point and say “my body”). As Merleau-Ponty famously proclaimed in Phenomznolagy, “Our body is not primarily in space; itis of i" emphasizing the spatiotemporal habit of being over the empiri- cal thing.ness of the material human bod. ‘By way of illustration, I can sit at my desk writing, and as long as things go as expected for me, my experience of my body is subjective, phenom enal, embodied, In Merleau-Ponty’s parlance, the desk, chair, pen, paper, and any other objects Tinteract with in the course of my act of writing con- stitute “equipment” for me, so long as that interaction does not present ‘any novel impediments, The second I curn the sheet of paper over and get a paper cut, however, I am temporarily removed from the embodied. state, and my experience of my own body is objective. Here, MerleauPonty would say a “breakdown” has occurred. Thus, embodiment involves a state of comfort, which allows us to forget our bodies as objects. In the colloqui- al sense, embodiment is the state of being in the moment. ‘As HGL designs move from virtual to actual embodiment, the user becomes less aware of her body as object—less aware of how her subjectivityWhose Boy? 77 intersted both the means of mediation and the awareness of the coal ena! body become subject to erasure. Consequently, the phenom, coe. alized the shift in quite these terms, the shift is sll a powerfel Gne Hor instance, in Jay Bolter and Diane Gromala’s 2008 book Windass and Mirors: Interaction Design, Digital Art, and the Myth of Dransparency, the 2uthon claim that inspite of the important digital ans perspective oferea by the designer camp—to view the interface as designed object—the pre- Yalling tends in HCI lean towards the structuralist eamp, who want the iMerface 0 function as a transparent window through which the user ena glimpse content without disruption, The more entrenched this paradigm becomes in the future, the more likely it will be that users wll acumen embodied interface represents the way they “ought” to imeract with digi- Lal technologies, to the point thatthe interface becomes naturalived. Ic ako at this poine that users inabilities to interact property or effectively with these technologies will result in the kinds of breakdowns for whieh they will blame themselves (*'m just no good with computers"), Potentially damp- 2ng access to powerful new means of communication in the process A BRIEF HISTORY OF HEI Of course, in the earliest days of computing, interaction with the machine iss quite licerally a direct physical activity, often requiring the direct ‘Panipulation of mechanical components. Depending on how one discs the history of the computer—beginning with the Babylonian abacas fea ers such as UNIVAC, ENIAC, and similar room-sized machines developed uring and just after the Second World War—the human operator's rela onship to the machine was an embodied, phenomenal one because of the direct feedback afforded by the mechanical apparatuses of thee carly tech- nologies, In a sense, itis not until the age of the digital computer that we first see traces of what we can identify as the modem interlace language, here virtual layers of metacontrol exist between human and machiee Therefore, in the interest of focus and brevity, we can construct ou hich ical overview from a more recent staring point: the shift from the alphabet. see aktiace ofthe command tine to what is presendy our far more perva sive interface language, the visually oriented desktop. ‘The shift in interface paradigms from the command line interface (GL) to the graphical user interface (GUI) standard can be traced back es 2968, when Doug Englebart invented and publicly demonstrated the cone pater mouse, which would eventually become the predominant device forCOMPOSING [MEDIA) = COMPOSING (EMBODIMENT) navigating the GUL ‘The programming and design team at Xerox's Palo ‘Alto Research Center had developed the first functional GUI in the late “70s, around the same time the personal computer was first introduced (0 a mass market. This innovation remained dormant for nearly a decade, as, the CLI remained the dominant mode of sereen interaction for all plat forms until Apple “borrowed” (unscrupulously stole, some say) the GUT ‘model from Xerox in the early ‘80s, incorporating the familiar desktop environment into their groundbreaking Macintosh desktop computer. Until the release of OS X in 1999, all versions of the Mac operating system. basically had the same look and feel, as the code was built upon the same basic conceptual platform. ‘The initial difference in interface standards caused much verbal war fare among the technogeck culture—depending upon where the allegianc- ¢s lay, they either saw the GUI as childish and the CLI as sophisticated and “pure” or the GUI as user friendlly and the CL as cryptic and unnecessari- ly clumsy. This attitude definitively changed in the early ‘90s with the intro- duction of the PC platform’s answer to the Mac GUI—Microsoft’s Windows, 8.11, the breakout version of an operating system the company had been developing since 1985. At this point in our history, when both major com- puting platforms had adopted the GUI as the primary interface of their respective operating systems, the paradigm shifi had occurred in earnest ‘Today, the familiar GUI icons, as well as the ingrained series of keyboard and mouse interactions, isa standard that can be seen in most second-lev- el oftware applications, additionally, the same iconographic logic pervades, much of the World Wide Web. Accompanying this shift, as we might expect, were efforts to research the educational and efficiency benefits—or drawbacks—of the GUI. Early attempts to research the effects of human-computer interface design on the learning capacities of users have been characterized as naive in meth- ‘odology. Two such studies, which suffered a barrage of criticism after their publications, were Dan Barker’s 1991 report “Gender Differences between Graphical User Interfaces and Command-Line Interfaces in Computer Instruction” and M.P. Halio’s 1990 article for Academic Computing entitled “Student Writing: Can the Machine Maim the Message?” Barker conclud- ed that neither gender nor a shift in interface design was an influential factors in computer instruction outcomes, but was attacked for using too small of a data set for too short 2 duration. Alternately, Halio argued that students using Macintosh computers (which came with a toyslike GUI) wrote at a significantly lower reading level and pursued less serious top- ics than students on IBMs; this conclusion upset readers because of the study's methodological inadequacies as well as what was alleged to be unacknowledged subjective bias. Studies like these began a more robustWhose sowye 179 ine of scholarly inquiry in the field of education; scholars in Rhetoric and Composition and Technology Studies also began examining the ideologi- cal assumptions behind interface designs, drawing critical attention to the equipment itself and, in so doing, raising important questions concerning which identity groups have easier or more difficult paths to access based. upon those designs. By this point, it isn't new thinking for us to consider technology as hav ing a gender bias—moreover, technology is often the product of other privileged positions as well: class, race, ability, language, logocentrism. ‘These lessons have been taught to us by the likes of Cynthia and Richard Selfe in their 1994 article “Politics of the Interface," Billic Wahlstrom’s “Communication and Technology: Defining a Feminist Presence in Research and Practice,” and Johndan Johnson€ilola's 2001 article “Little Machines: Understanding Users, Understanding Interfaces.” Built into computer interface designs are a series of semiotic messages that support hierarchical regimes along the axes of identity—think of the servile white- gloved hand that serves as a cursor, the white, professional figures depict- ced in clip art, or for that matter, the identity implications behind the entire desktop environment, These images send powerful associative sig- nals to nonwhite, lower-class, or otherwise marginalized users that to enter the world of the interface is to enter a world constituted around the val- ues of white, male, corporate professionalism. The Pew Research Genter’s Internet and American Life Project supports this claim, as data from a ‘number of surveys indicate disparities in rates of connectivity and usage habits between historically privileged and historically underrepresented. identity groups. The very symbols so familiar to certain social or cultural groups become so much cognitive noise—breakdowns in the equipment that lead to a self-conscious objectification of the self—for those who do not inhabit bodies of privilege. THE NEW INTERFACE Although the desktop-themed GUI might seem commonplace and ubiq) ous for computer users today, itis important that we keep in mind that it thas been with us only a relatively short time and that we will likely become ‘witnesses to its demise in the coming years. In fact, we can already see evi- dence of a shift away from the iconographic, metaphorical GUI standard. ‘This shift challenges Steven Johnson's claims that the function of meta- phor is crucial in order for an interface 10 make sense to the user. In his book Interface Culture, Johnson says the real cognitive energy of the desk- top metaphor is that it approximates, but doesn't duplicate, an actual desk- top. Someone like interface design expert Donald Norman, however, sees @ much more powerful alternative in the ‘invisible computer” concept,1a) COMPOSING (MEDIA) = COMPOSING (EMBODIMENT) where the interface is completely absorbed by the task defined to a given appliance, such as weather/traffie displays on ear windshields, or exercise clothing that monitors your health vitals while you're jogging. As the state of technology changes, so does the state of art and design. Faster proces: sors, more storage capacity, and the miniaturization of components are leading to experimentation with the language and landscape of the inter- face, the net effect of which is to create or amplify the sense of embodi- ment, Increasingly, Johnson's vision of the interface is being replaced by Norman's itis precisely because of this move towards invisibility that we should become more critically vigilant observers of this shift ‘What will characterize the look and feel of future technologies? What symbolic or actual equipment will we be called on to manipulate, and how can we identify whose body will be best suited for the task? What precise ly should we watch for in order to dispel the beguiling effects of the new interface? Basically, the machines are becoming smaller, more tactile and ergonomic, easier to synchronize data with one another, willing to listen to us and to look us over ever so closely (as in the retinal and finger security scanners that are becoming more accessible to the general computer-buy- ing public). Touchsensitive screens and handwriting and voice-recognition software, long thought to be impractical, are being continually upgrad- ed—these types of interfaces allow us to have more direct contact with our ‘machines rather than having a white-gloved avatar stand in our place on the computer screen. The illusion of direct haptic control, very much likg the interface Tom Cruise's character manipulates in Spielberg's almost-beliew- able scisi film Minority Report, is one manifestation of this shift. The real- life promise of such enticements is already being fulfilled. Marketready interface are already here and wooing us, as in the case of New York University’s Jel Han and his research with ‘multitouch graphical screens (http://www.cs.nyu.edu/~jhan /ftirtouch/), or Microvoft’s similar product called “Surface,” a coffee-table display tar- geted to business professionals, around which users gather to manipulate Aigitized objects such as videos, slideshow presentations, and spreadsheets ‘with their very own hands, Currently, the most popular consumer example of this haptic interface shift is perhaps Apple's Phone, which has a virtual “lock” the user slides her finger across in order to activate, after which she is able to scroll through lists of contacts, play songs, and navigate and resize web content simply by touching the display. ‘The pathway to the embodied interface doesn’t just reconfigure the experience of bodily contact with the machinery; in some cases, the goal is to minimize or eliminate that contact altogether, creating an almost tele pathic conduit between user and device to create an augmented mode of being that doesn’t feel augmented. To offer an example, MIT's Laboratory instantiations of the touch sensiWhere Body? at for Computer Science, in an initiative begun by the late and long-time director Michael Dertouzos, is currently pursuing the Semantic Web proj- cect with the WWW Consortium, an attempt to imbue web content with con- notative meaning so that it behaves in a more humancentric fashion. Of course, the problems inherent in this project involve constructing models for how “the human mind’ functions and acknowledging linguistic Muidity, ‘but that is a critique well beyond the scope of this present work, In concert with technological developments seeking to create the invisible, mentally augmented interface, we can also see that our cular al discourse is already beginning to embrace the notion. In addition to Dertouzos’s pursuit of creating an interfaceless computer that thinks with the user, I find many similar claims of the mind-to-machine linkage in pop- ular discourse. For instance, the software company PacificVoice has a slo- ‘gan urging the consumer to “speak your mind. Digitally.” 4 2001 article for WIRED magazine by Dateline correspondent and disability pundit John Hockenberry voices a similar philosophy: “The brain-body-machine inter- face doesn't seem to need the body as much as we believe it does. We hybrids are part of a universal redrafting of the human design specifica- tion.” Despite the problematic potential inherent in such statements, in which technology stands as a monolithic “cure” for all disability and thus potentially erases the need to speak of a culture of disability, the impulse to create invisible, natural interfaces persists. Futurist and assistive technol. ogy inventor Ray Kurzweil predicts that the second half of the twenty-first century will see the realization of artificial intelligence, but it will take the form of a merging of human and machine intelligence—what he famous- Jy calls the “singularity” Predicting that capitalism will drive this push, he sees the ultimate end of this exponential technological progression as ‘one where “there will be no clear distinction between human intelligence and machine intelligence”—and this will be facilitated by nanotechnology (153-4). While Iam personally skeptical of this kind of direct, teleological trajectory, I do think there’s a concerted move in the industry as a whole to make the human-machine contact zone seamless—to hide the techno- logical in the biological, to downplay the body’s role in maniputating it, to foster the illusion of a direct connection of technology to mind. Taken as a ‘whole, such efforts constitute a bleeding edge of interface design, onc that conflates technology and body in an attempt to erase the lines of demarca tion separating them, resulting in an embodied, phenomenal experience of the equipment at hand (at least for those able to afford it) ‘These examples of the new interface paradigm do not occur only at the bleeding edge, however. We can already see evidence of this shift emerg- ing in more popular areas of consumer technology as well: a trickle-down effect, if you will, that targets younger users in an effort to naturalize the1@ COMPOSING (MEDIA) = COMPOSING (EMBODIMENT) shift even further, The Wii, Nintendo’s latest videogame console featuring ‘motion-sensitive controllers, is significantly popular to the point that the company enjoyed significant back orders when it first launched. This pop- ular platform is the latest and most refined iteration in a history of video- game-related input devices designed to engage more of the body than just thumbs and forefingers: recall the Data Glove, the Light Gun, or the more recent floor pad used in the game Dance Dance Revolution! Additionally, toy- store shelves are lined with Spy Gear devices reminiscent of high-end vir- ‘ual reality prototypes that allow children to pretend to see or hear better, and in some cases communicate remotely with their fellow agents. ‘As a final example, I return to Microsoft founder Bill Gates in order to demonstrate the trajectory charted by one of the leading forces within the computing indusuy. In one of his corporate communiqués, a vision state- ‘ment drafted in 2001 entitled “A Software Driven Future,” he offers several key insights to his employees that we are beginning to sec in development today, particularly in the Surface tabletop and the Windows Media Center PC. In it, Gates stresses how the next stage of development will progress, at least in terms of Microsoft’ involvement. Gates’s vision emphasizes three main areas of innovation: The concept of ubiquity. “The screens that people carry around «with them (phone or PDA) should also function as the world’s nicest universal remote control. It will provide UI [user interface] for controlling every electrical gizmo in the user's world (all appli- ances, home, car, ete).” ‘+The potential of multimedia for both hardware and software devel. ‘opment. “Inside the home, users want access to information—time, weather, stocks, calendar, news, traffic, notifications—either visually or in audio, They want access to media—music, photos, and video.” + Utilizing already familiar, naturalized technologies. “All of the com- munications scenarios should work against the TV screen... All of the screens in the home should be able to display TV video.” (Scheer 118) Even as Bill Gates tansicions out of Microsoft and hands over the reigns to his Chief Sofaware Architect Ray Ozzie, the corporation’s R&D trajecto ry largely remains on the course established by its founder: to create hard- ‘ware and software experiences that blur the otherwise hardset lines separ rating the desktop computer, the World Wide Web, digital peripherals, and the human user (Levy 178). To my mind, at leas, it appears that Gates's «goal here, and indeed the goal of this entire new interface paradigm, is to render the interaction between human and computer phenomenal—thatWhose Body? 183 is, of the order of nonconceptualized equipment. In short, it appears that the ultimate look and feel of this new technology is seamlessness: not only will it permeate our environment, but it will incorporate all media atits dis- posal without complaint, and it will take advantage of our already natural. ized relations with established technologies in order to do this. Suffice it to ‘sy; though, that the allure of such efforts is that they pledge to bridge the ‘gap between mind/body and machine; the job of the technologieal erit ic, therefore, must be to agitate that quietude by acknowledging that the gap will still exist to varying degrees, and that human programmers and. designers will build their bridges based upon standardized assumptions and generalizations about the body, an impossible task in Merleau-Ponsy’s eyes given that the mode of human being can only ever be a uniquely sin- gular experience. THE TECHNO-AESTHETIC INTERRUPTION ‘The bong isa ermature in a post gender wold: it has mo truck with bisexuality, precedipal symbisis, unalienated labour, or other sections to organic wholeness through a final appropriation ofall the powers of the aris into a higher unity Donna Haraway ("A Cyborg Manifesto”) While the aforementioned hardware and software make up the most prew- alent logic of the newly emerging interface paradigm, wherein embodied, in.the-world behavior is seamlessly conflated with virtualized outputs (what Bolterand Gromala term a “window” interface), there also exists a counter- paradigm in which the technological apparatus is made noticably or even Aisruptively present for the user, constituting what Bolter and Gromala call, the “mirror” interface, and fomenting, albeit in a playful manner, Merleau- Ponty’s phenomenological breakdown. While I was on a teaching fellow- ship at the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2003, I had the opportunity to observe several experimental applications and interfaces that employed just such an interface logic, a logic that seeks to engage the user by making him or her hyperaware of the design qua design. Georgia Tech's Graphics, Visualization, and Usability Center (GVU) wti- lizes traditional virtual reality technology (goggles, gloves, etc.) 2s well as more accessible technologies such as Macromedia's Director design sofi- ‘ware to experiment in areas ranging from interpersonal communica: tion, adaptive technology for the disabled, habitation practices (i.e., smart homes), learning strategies, and gaming. One example of the center's research is Alice’ Adventures in New Media, an attempt to create an immer sive, augmented reality version of the Mac Hatter’s tea party scene from Lewis Carroll’s novel by placing the user in the role of Alice in order to184 COMPOSING [MEDIA) = COMPOSING (EMBODIMENT) help shape the plot. Additionally, the Topological Media Lab, directed by Sha Xin Wei (currently aiiated with Concordia University in Montreal), supports the development of projects using fabricbased, wearable com- puters and gesture-based projection systems. Erick Conrad's Aether is one such project, creating a haptic reading experience for the user by project- ing words onto a liquid surface that respond to touch—the words move and rearrange themselves when the user dips his or her hand into the pool. Diane Gromala's Biomeyphic Typography, a project out of Georgia Tech's Biomedia Lab, displays an animated font that responds to a user's bio- feedback data; shape, color, and size change according to corresponding changes in the user's physical and emotional state. These examples, and others ike them, are interdisciplinary projects that drave inspiration from academic fields far beyond computer science and engineering, including psychology, cognitive science, cultural studies, fine/performing ars, kines: ‘heties, physiology, and sociology, among others, It is worth Tooking at examples of these experimental applications because they offer us potential strategies for critical resistance, means by Which we can recognize the implicit political dynamics of the compar atively seamless interface designs emerging from commercial counter parts, In these sometimes joyful/sometimes-disorienting interface expert ‘ences, I can’t help but be reminded of Donna Haraway’s iconic figure of the cyborg, self an ironic embodiment of technology and biology fused together, a figure who exists to deconstruct the line separating the cultural from the natural and hus highlight the constructedness of the entire y5- tem, Like the cyborg, these interfaces don't simply celebrate the techno- logical, they complicate it. They allow us to “see the window” in order to create the potential for strategic political maneuvering within the techno- ‘cultural space. As Haraway’s epigraph above states, the cyborg is (among ‘other things) “postgender,” a fluid, multiplicitous mode of being capable of maneuvering around cultural gender constructs as well as so-called “nat- ural” biological categories, This doesn't mean it is necessarily beyond ot past the trappings of gendles, but rather chat it sees gender for what iti: politicized space for strategie performance, a space for either adhering to, tranggressing, or even transcending the conventions depending upon the Circumstances of the moment. Ontologically speaking, Haraway’s cyborg is an exaggerated metaphor for the human condition, imbuing Merleau Ponty’s notion of embodiment with a selFaware, strategic instability that takes achantage of the evershifting material reality of being in-the-world, ‘The cyborg reminds us that we are always already enmeshed with the equip- rent of the social world: its politics, its ideology, and its technology. Conceptually, this alternative series of technological applications, soft ware, hardware, and so forth challenges the emerging paradigm of theWhose Body? new interface, making present the seamlessness of the embodied inter- face by aestheticizing the interaction between person and machine, mak- ing the user acutely aware of the technological space he or she inhabits at that moment. Beyond the technical, beyond the aesthetic, these alterna- tive interfaces are politically subversive, enacting Nedra Reynolds's feminist politics of interruption. According to Reynolds, the practice of interrup- tion allows the marginalized subject to reclaim a sense of agency through discursive practices, in effect minimizing the effects of ideotogical inter- polation emanating from positions of power (59). Awareness of the state of embodiment—an interruption of the phenomenal state aspired to by dominant interface design—is a vital means by which users can recognize their own roles as technological agents when producing or consuming new media texts, Such interruptions are invaluable for technoartists and designers to create in the first instance; they are also invaluable for new- media theorists and critics to acknowledge and critically study in the sec- ond instance, Collectively, such interruptions provide us a clearer glimpse into Selfe and Selfe's “contact zone,” the politicized space where human and machine meet, and demand that we question the constructedness of that space. ‘We shape and we are shaped by one another through our technologies of communication. As Michel Foucault’s conception of biopower makes lear, newly emerging technological paradigms operate according to two complementary forces: an “anatamo-politis of the human body" and “a biopolities of the population” (139). Together, these forces work to dis cipline @ population in order to impose hierarchies of order and regula: tory systems of control. While technological standardization is not neces- sarily in itself insidious, it does create conditions by which control is exer- cised over people: by sanctioning purposes of use (valuing business and commercial interests, devaluing artistic, civic, or informal ones), reinfore- ing literacy thresholds (rendering learning or physical disabilities impedi- ‘ments to proper learning) and validating certain styles of delivery over oth- ers (devaluing gender or cultural differences marking how people speak or move). By making the familiar strange, by interrupting the stealthy march over the line to the embodied interface, we can potentially open up spaces for greater access, allowing those groups who have historically been tech- nologically marginalized a means by which to spot, cross, and even shape that line themselves. CONCLUSION AAs the virtual boundary between human and machine becomes intracta- bly blurred, it becomes increasingly important to give voice to a number of questions and concerns that orbit this approaching shift in interface186 COMPOSING (MEDIA) = COMPOSING (EMBODIMENT) design paradigms, questions and concerns to which—borrowing from the language of Cynthia Selfe—it would do us good to pay attention. One over- riding concern potentially threatens the critical work that has already been done in the area of Technology and Media Studies: specifically, that it will he deemed impertinent or inapplicable to these new design standards, ‘and that the assumptions identified by this work will be allowed to con- tinue without scrutiny. In order to stave off this analytical obsolescence, \we ought to extend the conversation of access—that crucial buzzword that scems to offer us a way of bridging the digital divide between the techno- logical haves and havesnots—so that it applies broadly to the realm of inter- face design. The technological challenges driving assistive/adaptive tech- nology give us a good starting place to begin the critical work of assessing the design decisions underlying the matcrial conditions of newer technolo- gies, but can we also identify bodies altogether left out or unconsidered in these new interface designs, claims of individualized customization to the contrary? As we know from Merleau-Ponty, a necessary component of the embodied state lies in its hidden nature; when comfortable, when proper 1y functioning in-the-world, the body hides itself from itself. My concer is, that the push towards an embodied interface will facilitate reakworld prac tices of silencing and marginalization, in effect essentializing difference. In other words, will the mistakes that were previously blamed on bad inter- face design, because the technology will go into hiding, by default fall into the lap of the user? In such a state, we risk forgetting to ask whose body is, assumed or privileged by this new paradigm, and thus the need for more critical scrutiny on this point becomes increasingly important as we enter this shift. ‘We should remain cautious abouta reflexive return to the prevailing cul- tural myths about technology, the kind that Christina Has outlines in her book Writing Technology. When the machinery itself becomes hidden, when ‘we forget our integumental bodies, conditions are prime for a reiteration of technology as a transparent, neutral tool that merely facilitates the tans {fer of information with no inherently politicized bias built into it. On the other endl of that spectrum lies the myth that technology has a liberato- ry-alkpowerful essence. As an aside, we can already see these myths taking shape in the aforementioned comments of Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and John Hockenberry. As critics, itis our responsibility to identify such instances of ‘myth substantiation and analyze how these discourses contribute to certain, reality effects within our culture. in addition to concerns about the philosophical or cultural impact of the embodied interface, we should pay attention to the material impact as well. A pervasive quandary exists in the conflict between the unique phe- nomenologieal condition of embodiment and a marketplace whose logicnor Body? 187 is predicated on normalizing mass production. This conflict presents one mechanism of exclusion and should be studied, but more overt and famil- iar mechanisms will remain in play, such as cost and availability of technol- ogy. What role will market forces play in the development and dissemina- tion of this new technology? At the very least, financial standing will like- ly, then as now, limit some groups’ abilities to benefit from interacting with, these new interfaces, maintaining or perhaps even further expanding the digital divide, Lastly, where can we identify sites for resistance? Certainly, we should continue the pursuit Gynthia and Richard Selfe call for when they sug- gest that we become “technology crities as well as technology users"—this applies to our scholarly work as well as the work we encourage our students to do in the classroom. But in addition to becoming critical readers of the new interface, we should think of ways of participating, for example, in the design process of software as end-user tech consultants making up part ofa professional collective. And insofar as it's in our power as writers of grants, influencers of policy, and purchasers of technology, we should strive to see that technology is designed and distributed equitably. Even as creators of digital media texts, we should strive to create the kind of work that inter- ‘rupts the ideological lull brought on by new interfaces and foments a pro- ductive breakdown, dragging otherwise hidden ideologies into the critical light. As academics, education professionals, and even artists, we should try to position ourselves at the reception and production ends of the techno- logical assembly line, one small way of ensuring that our push towards par- ticipatory democracy in the digital world can be realized—for everybody, and every body, involved.